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- boosting 21st century skills

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Scaffolding for Ownership and Independence: Students should jump into the deep end and learn through their failures. Providing them too much support makes them dependent. DISCUSS!

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Scaffolding for Ownership and Independence: Students should jump into the deep end and learn through their failures. Providing them too much support makes them dependent. DISCUSS!

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Failure is part of learning. If we are able to analyse our mistakes, we can get to know our strengths and weaknesses better and therefore we may improve.

The problem is that many students regard failure as a label and not as a path to success. I believe teachers' role here is vital, our students need to feel that in our lessons failing is inextricably interwoven with learning.

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I always find setting up group work and collaborative tasks a nightmare and I think most of the times what I actually do is "sit the students in groups and provide them with a task". Well I usually don't  give up and that is why I am here!

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http://learningdesigner.org/viewer.php?uri=/personal/MargaridaPato/designs/fid/a4ffd532f48709eb26ade9cdeb8bfc67037a183edd02534b44d239fc1f883336

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At my school many teachers try to engage with the community and explore the resources it has to give us. Some of the institutions we usually go to for support are the Town Hall and the Health Centre. However, for some projects we ask for the participation of old students and experts working in several areas.
Personally, I usually engage with the community when I am organising Comenius projects or even eTwinning projects. In my classes I seldom do it - definitely a thing to consider!

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I believe this picture ( https://www.linkedin.com) shows the essence of collaboration. It goes beyond cooperation, it implies each individual contributing with something of his own to the accomplishment of a common task. 

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I believe this picture ( https://www.linkedin.com) shows the essence of collaboration. It goes beyond cooperation, it implies each individual contributing with something of his own to the accomplishment of a common task. 

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Collaboration or not collaboration, that is the question!

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Collaboration or not collaboration, that is the question!

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Personally, I find the organisation of truly collaborative tasks quite hard. Specially because most of the times, in my classes, group work does not imply interdependability and in this case it is more a matter of cooperation than collaboration.
In most of the tasks I organise, I don't really think there is effective collaboration. Also, some students are always more in charge than others. I think many of the lower-proficiency students tend not to engage in the activities, maybe as a corollary of a low self-esteem. This fact limits the responsibility they take for the tasks assigned.
So, even though I organise most of the tasks as pair or group work, even though students are always asked to discuss issues, share ideas and produce joint documents, I don't think they do it collaboratively. This means I still have a long way to go as far as leaving the stage to those who should be the stars.

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What does it take to be a Human Rights Hero?
17/18-year-old students
Subject: English B2 level
Learning goals: specific language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking; develop critical thinking and collaboration skills
Procedure: each student analyses the life of a Human Rights Hero; they select important information about him/her;  they share the information with their group; together they come up with a common set of characteristics; students decide on the type of text to write (recipe, poem, article...) about what it takes to be a hero.

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About the 5 key-components of PBL: Definitely I think the hardest to apply are effective collaboration and multifaceted assessment. First of all, I think many times we believe to be asking for collaboration while in fact students are cooperating. I don't believe these are the same! Cooperating doesn't really imply sharing ideas, negotiating, reaching common ground! Students can work individually and paste their work together. Collaborating is the real issue and the real challenge: how to foster and encourage a coordinated effort to solve a problem or question? How to motivate lower-proficiency level students to take part in the process?And then how to assess not only the outcome but also and above all the process?

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About the 5 key-components of PBL: Definitely I think the hardest to apply are effective collaboration and multifaceted assessment. First of all, I think many times we believe to be asking for collaboration while in fact students are cooperating. I don't believe these are the same! Cooperating doesn't really imply sharing ideas, negotiating, reaching common ground! Students can work individually and paste their work together. Collaborating is the real issue and the real challenge: how to foster and encourage a coordinated effort to solve a problem or question? How to motivate lower-proficiency level students to take part in the process?And then how to assess not only the outcome but also and above all the process?

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Most commonly  used teaching strategy: group work

My main (but not favourite) activity: Walking around repeating the sentence "speak English!"

Current approach: communicative. I try to foster communication with and between students. However, I think I take the floor too often.

Problems with my approach: need to focus on students more; use their ideas/interests/motivations as background for the activities; provide them meaningful tasks they can relate to.
As for group work I need to provide feedback on time and before deadlines maybe by establishing mini-deadlines ; provide each student in a group with a specific role. Scaffolding is essential but if I don't organise it properly, everything is meaningless.

Students' interests: I haven't assess them properly nor have I used that assessment to group them in flexible and more enriching ways

Class/topic: 11th year (B2 level) and Human Rights